This Harper's Weekly cartoon by Thomas Nast caricatures verbal
sparring which erupted on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives during
debate over a proposed civil rights bill.

Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts had introduced his civil rights bill
in every Congressional session since 1870. The bill would have outlawed racial
segregation in all public accommodations regulated by law, such as hotels,
public schools, theaters, steamships, and railroads. When Sumner died in March
1874, Republicans like Harper's Weekly editor George William Curtis
insisted that the civil rights bill be enacted in his honor.

Reconstruction had already been abandoned in most of the South and racial
discrimination against black Americans remained widespread. To the Republicans'
dismay, the fall elections of 1874 resulted in a Democrats majority in the House
for the first time since before the Civil War. During the lame duck session of
the outgoing Congress in the early months of 1875, Republicans worked to pass
the civil rights bill. This last-ditch effort of the defeated Republicans
provoked a hostile reaction from many Southern Democrats, particularly
Congressman John Young Brown of Kentucky.

On February 4, 1875, in the midst of an impassioned debate on the House
floor, Speaker of the House James Blaine of Maine, a Republican, interrupted
Brown to inquire whether his derogatory remarks were aimed at a member of the
House. The Kentucky congressman denied such an intention, but continued with a
crescendo of invective: "If I was to desire to express all that was
pusillanimous in war, inhuman in peace, forbidding in morals, and infamous in
politics, I should call it 'Butlerizing.'"

Brown's slur was aimed at Congressman Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts, a
maverick Republican (at the time). Butler had infuriated Southerners during the
Civil War when he commanded the Union occupation forces in New Orleans. For his
allegedly harsh and abusive rule, New Orleans residents called him
"Beast" or "Brute" Butler. As a congressman after the war,
Butler further angered Southern Democrats with his support of radical
Reconstruction and black civil rights, and his determined opposition to
President Andrew Johnson. Butler served as the lead House prosecutor at
Johnson's removal trial in the Senate, following the president's impeachment.

Brown's personal insult of Butler caused a sensation in the House.
Congressman Robert Hale of New York, a Republican, offered a resolution of
censure against Brown, while Representative Henry Dawes of Massachusetts, also a
Republican, offered a resolution of expulsion. After heated debate, Dawes
withdrew his resolution, and the Hale resolution passed. Congressman Brown then
stood before the collective body of his silent House colleagues as Speaker
Blaine formally censured him. When the speaker finished, Brown replied that he
accepted the reprimand and meant no disrespect. After a pregnant pause, he
added, "to the House."

In this cartoon, Brown is a wild tiger, whose sharp fangs and claws are
poised to tear into the flesh of Congressman Butler, who stands calmly by his
desk upon which rests a document: "Very Civil Rights in the House of
Representatives." The Brown tiger is prevented from mauling Butler by four
of the Kentuckian's fellow Democrats, who have grasp him by the tail. The two
identifiable congressmen are: Fernando Wood (back) and Samuel Cox (front), both
of New York, and both hopeful of becoming the next speaker of the house for the
incoming Congress (neither did).

In the background, Speaker Blaine pounds his gavel and shouts for order, as
the recording secretary and parliamentarian cower behind their chairs. The
injunction written on the paper in front of Blaine, "Gentlemen you must not
let your wild animals loose ..." refers to a hoax perpetrated in late 1874
by James Gordon Bennett Jr., editor of the New York Herald. He fooled
many readers into thinking that wild animals had broken free from the Central
Park zoo. (For another visual reference to the Central Park animal hoax, see the
archive for the Harper's Weekly cartoon of February 6, 1875, "The Biggest Scare and Hoax
Yet!")

The outgoing Republican Congress passed Sumner's civil rights bill after
removing public schools from the law's protective umbrella. Harper’s Weekly
retracted its endorsement of the weakened measure. President Ulysses S.
Grant signed the bill into law on March 1, 1875. In 1883, the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. It would be almost 75 years
until another civil rights bill would pass Congress and become law.